The present invention relates to a method and system for controlling the movement of a computer pointer.
The development of low-power, compact, mobile remote control devices has fostered a need for the development of methods of sending pointer and control information to a display device.
The original pointer controller, now referred to as a “mouse”, was developed in 1964 and has since become one of the primary input devices for a multitude of different computer systems and the dominant input device for personal desktop computing. The mouse, in its current form, works well for situations where there is sufficient room for the movement of the mouse device (approximately one square foot). However, it does not work well for situations where there is very little room for hand movements, such as on a laptop or handheld computer. The prior art describes a variety of different pointer controllers, some of which have been realized into commercial products and many of which have not. Two notable controllers are designed for compact situations and have been embodied in commercial products. One is a joystick-like device, which is located on the keyboard and works in response to lateral directional pressure placed on it by a user. Click information is provided by a separate button. The other is a touch pad, which works by tracking the pressure, direction and velocity of touch movements (finger or stylus) and relaying this information to the computer. The pointer movement mimicks the movement of the finger or stylus.
However, all of these devices have the disadvantage of requiring special hardware and requiring a constant transmission of data. This is fine for systems having a direct connection to their computing devices; however, they are not well suited to low-power, portable wireless systems which do not have the substantial resources required.
Therefore, there is a need in the art for methods and systems which permit the sending of pointer data from a low-power, compact pointer controller to a display device.